McGwire's fingerprints all over NLCS

ST. LOUIS, Mo. – Hanley Ramirez and Yasiel Puig are commonly cited as reasons for the Dodgers’ offensive resurgence since June, when they transformed from one of the National League’s worst-hitting teams into one of its best.

Another possible reason: Mark McGwire, the Dodgers’ first-year hitting coach, who spent three successful years with the St. Louis Cardinals before choosing to return home to Southern California in the offseason.

It might have taken a little while for his teachings to stick.

“I think he's been great for us,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said Thursday in his pre-NLCS press conference. “He comes with a lot of credibility as far as his career. He came with the credibility from St. Louis and what hitters were able to do and the development. Some of their young guys seemed like they continued to get better.”

The Cardinals had the best on-base percentage in the NL in 2012 and scored the second-most runs. In 2011, McGwire’s second year, they led the NL in runs and on-base percentage after finishing seventh and ninth in the two categories two years prior, under ex-hitting coach Hal McRae.

The Dodgers have experienced a similar, if not as pronounced, uptick. They were 13th in the NL in runs, 10th in on-base percentage and 15th in slugging percentage in 2012 under ex-hitting coach Dave Hansen. With McGwire in 2013, the Dodgers were seventh in runs, third in on-base and sixth in slugging.

Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said that all adds up.

“To quantify what Mark was able to do, he had a lot of young hitters that he helped develop into what we're seeing right now,” Matheny said Thursday, also in his press conference in St. Louis. “You can go through (our) clubhouse and realize that he's got his fingerprint on quite a few of them, and their approach and their professionalism. And we never made much of a secret about the respect we have for Mark McGwire and what he was able to do here in this city, not just as a player.”

As a player, of course, McGwire was a star, 11 times hitting 32 home runs or more, including 70 in his historic 1998 season as a Cardinal. He later admitted to taking steroids “on occasion throughout the ’90s,” much of which was the prime of his career. Because of that, he’s unlikely to make the Hall of Fame, but his career numbers are clearly of that caliber.

“I was blown away at how a superstar player can also be a superstar coach,” Matheny said. “He has a great sense of how to teach the art of hitting and how to individualize it as good as anybody I've seen.”

The question this week is how much McGwire’s inside knowledge of the Cardinals will help the Dodgers prepare to face them. Neither manager shied away from that topic Thursday.

“Obviously, in our meetings today, Mac has probably a lot more input than he would on another club, because he obviously does know their hitters fairly well and what they try to do and how to get some of them out and where their weaknesses would be,” Mattingly said.

But Matheny turned it around. Whatever McGwire does have on the Cardinal hitters, the St. Louis pitchers can probably similarly exploit his teachings to the Dodgers’ hitters.

“He does have some inside knowledge on our guys, but we've got some inside knowledge on him too, and probably some of the things that he's teaching,” Matheny said. “We expect him to come out and have his guys very prepared just like we will.”